By Alexis Gizikis – EENA.
What is risk perception? Where do Europeans feel safer? Do they perceive the EU a safe place to live in? What do Europeans perceive as important challenges to security?
What is risk perception?
Citizens’ risk perception refers to the subjective assessment that people make about how likely they will be affected by a threatening or dangerous situation (the probability of the risk) and how much the potential consequences will affect them (the severity of the risk). In the context of security threats, citizens’ risk perception applies to natural and manmade disasters and also threats that have started to appear more frequently in recent years, such as terrorism, organized crime, cybercrime, threats to the environment and public health.
Special Eurobarometer public opinion surveys
Citizens’ security risk perception across the 28 EU member states has been surveyed by different Special Eurobarometer public opinion surveys. The latest survey, the Special Eurobarometer 464b published in December 2017, surveys citizens’ overall awareness, experiences and perceptions of security. The survey questions are based on those asked in previous surveys[1] and describes how risk perception has changed over the years by comparing the responses of the latest survey to the previous.
In this review we look at 4 questions surveyed by the Special Eurobarometer:
– Where do Europeans feel safer? Do they perceive the EU a safe place to live in?
– What do Europeans perceive as important challenges to security?
– Do Europeans perceive that national authorities are doing enough to tackle security challenges?
– What do Europeans believe about law enforcement agencies exchange information with other EU countries?
Key Findings
In the review of the Special Eurobarometer survey, we observe that:
– The majority of citizens in Europe feel safe in their immediate surroundings but concerns are raised when the question extends to Europe as a safe place to live in.
– There is a general consensus that terrorism, organised crime, natural and manmade disasters, cybercrime and the EU’s external borders are important challenges to EU security.
– Most respondents believe that the police and other LEAs are doing more about terrorism compared to other threats. However, there is no strong consensus (63%) about LEAs are doing enough to fight terrorism.
– A vast majority (92%) of the respondents believe that LEAs should exchange information with their counterparts in other EU countries.
LETSCROWD is further exploring the public perception of security in mass gatherings and needs your help in responding to its survey about European citizen’s attitude towards security in mass gathering events.
Where do Europeans feel safer? Do they perceive the EU a safe place to live in?
The respondents were asked to what extent they agree or disagree with the following statements:
– Your immediate neighbourhood is a secure place to live in.
– Your city, town or village is a safe place to live in.
– Our country is a safe place to live in.
– The EU is a safe place to live in.
Figure 1 - Question: To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements about public security? [source: Special Eurobarometer 464b]
The responses indicate that despite the terrorist attacks in the EU since 2015, respondents continue to feel safe in their surroundings, but concern has been raised for Europe:
– 90% of the people agree that their immediate neighbourhood, city, town or village is a secure place to live in, showing a large majority in the EU feels safe in the places they live
– Less people, but still a significant majority (82%), feel secure when the question expands to the country level
– The percentage drops to 68% when respondents are asked if they believe the EU is a safe place to live in and has dropped by 11% when compared to the responses of the 2015 survey.
What do Europeans perceive as important challenges to security?
Special Eurobarometer 464b also surveyed how important different security challenges are to the internal security of the EU. In the context of the survey, the following security challenges were considered:
– terrorism;
– organised crime;
– natural and man-made disasters;
– cybercrime;
– EU’s external borders.
Figure 2 - Question: In your opinion, how important are the following challenges to the internal security of the EU? [source: Special Eurobarometer 464b]
– 95% of the respondents see terrorism as an important or fairly important challenge
– 93% see organised crime as an important or fairly important challenge
– 89% see natural and manmade disasters as an important or fairly important challenge
– 87% see cybercrime as an important or fairly important challenge
– 86% see the EU’s external borders as an important or fairly important challenge
In all member states, at least 86% of the respondents perceive the above security challenges as important with significant differences between countries over how much of a problem they are. An increase is observed in the percentage of those assessing these issues as important within the period of three Eurobarometer surveys.
Do Europeans perceive that national authorities are doing enough to tackle security challenges?
The Special Eurobarometer 464b asked respondents about the extent to which they agree that the police and other law enforcement authorities are doing enough to combat these threats.
Figure 3 - Question: To what extend do you agree or disagree that the police and other LEAs in our country are doing enough to fight …? [source: Special Eurobarometer 464b]
Compared to the other security challenges, terrorism is the threat that most respondents (63%) believe that the police and other LEAs are doing enough, in contrast to drug trafficking, cybercrime, arms trafficking, human trafficking and sexual exploitation, corruption and money laundering.
What do Europeans believe about law enforcement agencies exchange information with other EU countries?
The survey also questioned to what extend people agree or disagree that the national police and other national LEAs should exchange information with their counterparts in other EU countries in order to fight crime and terrorism.
Figure 4 - Question: To what extend do you agree or disagree that in order to fight crime and terrorism the national police and other LEAs should exchange information with other EU countries? [source: Special Eurobarometer 464b]
A vast majority of 92% of the respondents agree on the need to share information within the EU to better fight crime and terrorism.
[1] Special Eurobarometer 371 on “Internal Security” (June 2011), Special Eurobarometer 380 on “Awareness of Home Affairs” (December 2011), and Special Eurobarometer 432 on “Europeans’ Attitudes Toward Security” (March 2015)